


like shadows come undone

by cindo



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Auguste is a ghost that only Laurent can see, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, What if Auguste had been there for Laurent? Except not really, mostly canon-compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 10:40:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6235396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cindo/pseuds/cindo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Auguste comes back with the tattered remains of their father’s army, but it takes only a glance for Laurent to realize something is wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like shadows come undone

Auguste comes back with the tattered remains of their father’s army, but it takes only a glance for Laurent to realize something is _wrong._

He sees the way his brother holds himself apart from the rest, showing nothing of the camaraderie Laurent was sometimes jealous of with his men. He sees, too, the way no one else’s eyes linger on Auguste, who had always been brightest, the most radiant.

Carefully, he says in a voice hardly more than a sigh, “Where is my brother? Where is Auguste?”

Auguste hears it above the noise of the crowd, because he is looking around, and when his eyes meet Laurent’s, it almost seems like he’s seeing right through him.

Laurent shudders, but finds that he cannot look away.

“Oh, Laurent,” August says, words falling like the gentle breeze on a still day, at the same time his uncle breaks apart Laurent’s quiet world with thunder: “Auguste is dead.”

* * *

“Please,” Laurent whispers, “don’t leave me.”

“I won’t,” says his uncle.

“Never,” says his brother.

* * *

A year passes, and Laurent learns to live with his brother’s ghost at his shoulder (learns, too, that he would much rather have Auguste-not-quite-there, than no Auguste at all).

He wakes up some nights from nightmares of forever darkness and suffocating loneliness, clutching at his bedsheets, sweat a shiny sheen across his too-pale skin. Blindly, Laurent reaches for the glimmer in the air, knowing, _knowing_ —

His hands close around nothing, and panic spikes in his chest. He knows. He _knows_ it is unreasonable, but he cannot help the sobs that rack his chest. “Auguste, _Auguste_.” His voice is halfway to a scream, and he does not care (he will care, in the morning, when the shadows are not leaping at him, snatching away his brother, _he will not let them_ ).

“Laurent!” comes Auguste’s voice, sharp, commanding, cutting through the night. “Laurent, I am here.”

But Laurent is too far into the darkness to believe the familiar voice; all he can see behind squeezed-shut eyes is Auguste lying in a pool of his own blood, Damianos standing over him. “You are _not_!” he says, vicious. “You are not _here_ , and you will never be!”

He is met with the kind of silence that only truth brings: the forever-kind, that the dead are so intimate with.

* * *

 “Forgive me, I did not mean that.”

* * *

Laurent returns from a hunting trip with his uncle to find Auguste pacing his room, the careful lines of his body blurring in the sunlight. When he sees his brother, he feels something tight and hot rising in his chest; it is hard to breathe, all of a sudden.

“Brother,” he says, entreating, voice still hoarse from the trip, and all those sleepless nights, and it hurts, it hurts to stumble to the bed because of the stiffness in his legs, an unpleasant, bone-deep ache, but he needs Auguste to know, he needs Auguste to know what he means to him. “Brother, _I am sorry._ ”

“You were right.” And there is something sad and knowing in Auguste’s eyes, sharp as the blade he wielded with such prowess in life. “I could not protect you, now.”

Auguste leans towards him, as if to embrace his little brother. His arms pass through Laurent’s shoulders harmlessly, imparting no warmth, but Laurent closes his eyes, and pretends.

* * *

The first time Laurent steps into the training yard with a wooden sword in his hands and a hundred Akielon sword forms in his head, Auguste is there, waiting for him.

He is not holding anything, hands loosely at his side, but Lauren supposes—supposes that is to be expected.

“I won’t let you stop me,” Laurent says, taking a guess at his brother’s mind. He had been good at that, once, when Auguste’s expression was open like a book (his favorite book), and he smiled at everyone who said so. Now, with death an unbridged distance between them, Laurent is not so sure anymore.

“I do not think I can, had I wanted to.” There is Auguste’s smile, undimmed by death, the dimple in his cheek clear even against the translucence of his skin under the afternoon light. “I will help you, if you promise not to run towards an early death.”

“I will not,” Laurent replies, scornful. He will get revenge on Damianos Prince-killer; he will not give the man the pleasure of living up to his epithet a second time.

Auguste nods, as he moves around Laurent as if to take his arms and guide them, holds out his own instead in the first Akielon form and waits for Laurent to mirror him.

Laurent cannot help but think, with his brother’s presence wrapped around him like a blanket, that this is what it means to feel safe again.

* * *

“Laurent, my boy, people say you talk to yourself. People say you talk to your brother. Everyone grieves differently, but we must not let the people think Vere is weakened, that our Prince is weak. Do you understand?”

“Yes, uncle.”

* * *

The day that Laurent is to be gifted an Akielon slave, Laurent sets out for his rooms with a bottle of the strongest liquor the kitchen boy he bribed could find. Auguste is trotting behind him, his mouth set in a thin line, the tension clear in the set of his shoulder.

Laurent is feeling just reckless enough to think: _there is nothing you can do to stop me from doing this foolish thing._

And he knows, knows beyond a doubt that it is foolish. First, to accept his uncle’s gift of a slave, and now, to get drunk before he greets him? Laurent, who has never wanted to own a slave, does not think he can get through the night without the numbing buzz of alcohol in his blood.

Auguste will just have to deal with it.

“Why did you say yes?” Auguste asks quietly, when Laurent is halfway through the bottle, and the room is just a little bit blurry around the edges. “You did not have to.”

Laurent’s thoughts are scattered enough that he does not manage the careful control he has since mastered, and a few stray ones slip through; it is unfortunate that they are the truthful ones. “I cannot refuse a gift from uncle.” A pause, and then, winningly, he adds: “It would make me look ungracious.”

Either Auguste does not get his humor, or he does not acknowledge it, because he is serious when he says lowly, “Don’t do this.” The crown prince of Vere, pleading?

Laurent makes a noise that could’ve been laugh or sob.

“But I have to, don’t you understand?” His words sound slurred even to him, and he wonders, for a moment, if Auguste will understand. Then, with a pang of guilt: _Doesn’t he always? He is the only one who will._ “I know—I know how our uncle thinks, the game he plays. Would it not be most satisfying, to beat him with his own pawns? Preferably over the head. Multiple times.” _There_ , he thinks, satisfied, _there, I have said it._

Auguste says nothing.

He says nothing as Laurent makes his way to the viewing chambers. He says nothing as Laurent expresses his gratitude at his uncle’s thoughtfulness. He says nothing as Laurent’s eyes first fall upon the bound and drugged figure of the Akielon slave, as he takes in the anger hidden beneath the drugs in his eyes, the ragged scar on bronze skin.

Auguste says nothing at all as Damianos Prince-killer is brought to his knees in front of Laurent.

* * *

“You mean to kill him.” It is not an accusation, only a simple statement of fact.

“He killed you.” That, too, is a fact.

* * *

The world—the world is not staying _still_ and he knows something is wrong, only that he cannot figure out what, he cannot grasp the answer that is just out of reach, cannot— _think._

Laurent stumbles, puts out a hand to steady himself, his teeth clenched tight as he willed the world to stop spinning.

When Damen comes in unannounced, Laurent almost attacks him. Moments later, they _are_ attacked, and in the brief moments of clarity between blows, he admits to himself that he would not have survived this long had Damen not been there.

After Damen has gone, and Laurent slumps to the ground with no feeling left in his legs, he turns to see Auguste sitting cross-legged in front of him, taking in the scene, his eyes a million miles away.

* * *

Laurent does not see much of his brother on his way to the border. Sometimes, in the sun, he thinks he catches a glimpse of Auguste among the trees, watching. Sometimes, he thinks he can see Auguste walking between his men, hovering near Jord and Aimeric.

He catches himself staring into empty space, as if he can will his brother to appear there, and he chides himself for the inattention.

“Laurent!”

He jolts from his thoughts, and turns, breath hitching even as relief floods his chest, makes him feel light-headed. “Au—”

It is not Auguste who calls him, but Damen—naive, barbaric Damen (Damen Prince-killer, dangerous, dangerous, _dangerous_ )—and Laurent shuts his mouth on the first vicious words that threaten to rise and destroy _everything._

_You have killed him. He is gone. What are you, next to him?_

He does not say: _I see him in you. Kind-hearted. Noble-minded. My brother. My friend._

* * *

Later, he does say it: “You remind me of him. He was the best man I have ever known,” he says, and means it in the same way he meant it when he told Damen that his brother is the weaker man, that he understood Jokaste’s choice.

Later, he says: “Stay with me until this thing is done, and I will take off the cuffs and the collar.”

* * *

Auguste is already in his room by the time Laurent gets there. He lets out a small breath and relaxes, before closing the door quietly behind him.

“Brother,” Laurent says, and waits.

“He is right, you know? Damianos. You cannot keep playing into our uncle’s hand.”

“Yes, I know, Damen has already told me how foolish I was being.” Laurent flushes a little when he remembers the cruel words he had thrown back at Damen, searching out the sharpest barbs and digging them in where he knew they would hurt most.

Auguste gives him a fleeting smile that makes Laurent feel like he is ten again.

“You and him are so alike sometimes,” Laurent says, “that I can close my eyes and hear his words in your voice.”

“Does that make it easier to bear, when he tells you you are wrong?”

His lip twitches, and Laurent has to fight back a small smile of his own. It is a strange feeling, when he felt so drained just moments ago. “Find someone else to stroke your ego for you, brother.”

* * *

He wakes with his hands bound behind, and a faint throbbing in his head that tells him, very definitively, that he is fucked. There is no clever way to get himself out of this, and he knows the only way it ends is in death.

_I wish—_ and he stops that thought, because _there is no one to save him._

Only—

He feels a steadying presence beside him, and if his head wasn’t spinning so, he would turn so that he can meet his brother’s eyes.

_Stay with me._

_Always._

* * *

“You were right; he is a good man.”

“I did not say that.”

“But you mean it.

“So do you.”

“Yes.”

* * *

Standing in front of his uncle and his men as they ripped his reputation to shreds and lay bare his life in mistakes, Laurent keeps his gaze focused on his older brother.

It is an easy thing, when Auguste is standing not three feet in front of him. The anger in those ghostly, not-dead eyes is enough to keep Laurent upright, enough to keep his flagging strength from snapping.

He will not give his uncle the pleasure.

“Stand tall, my brother,” Auguste says, over and over again, a counterpoint against his uncle’s poisonous words.

_You are filthy. You are a traitor. You are unworthy of being Auguste’s successor._

And Auguste says, in reply, though no one but Laurent can hear: “You are everything I could have asked for. You are more.”

It is enough.

* * *

The bells ring, and it is over.

Laurent lets Paschal and Nikandros see Damen to the infirmary.

Slowly, he pushes himself to his feet, his muscles crying out now that adrenaline isn’t lending him energy. There is only one other person left in the room. Auguste turns at the sound of Laurent’s approach.

Laurent meets his brother’s eyes, and does not look away as Auguste drops to one knee. “My brother. My King,” he says, and there is pride and love and affection in those words beyond what Laurent can imagine.

“Auguste.”

Laurent looks at the fading form of his brother’s ghost, dissolving into a thousand pieces of light, and feels his heart soar. “Farewell, we will not meet again.”

He turns away, towards the sun.


End file.
